Prince Charming

There we were in the country.  Things were sort of evening out. I was able to go to work and not have to wait on rides or get him rousted to take me in every morning.  The kids were in a little country school and liking it a lot.  The other shoe eventually dropped though since when things were more settled, Tucker got bored.  We also had more privacy in a bigger house and that meant I had to have sex more often than I wanted.  I would often wait until he fell asleep on the couch and barely try to wake him and go to bed hoping he’d stay there all night.  As I said though, he got bored and that meant it was my responsibility to entertain him.

Entertaining him often meant sexual escapades.  I’m not a prude but I was no longer myself at this point you see? I was broken down and almost resigned to my fate most of the time. I felt like little more than an implement for him to gratify his baser needs. There were times that I narrowly escaped because we had to stay home with the kids or there wasn’t money enough to indulge in the hedonistic activities he craved.  When that happened he would be hateful to everyone and sullen. Those nights I would cringe when he came to bed and pretend to be asleep hoping I could escape having to submit to him.  If I turned him down, he would fight and pout and slam doors until the kids were up and asking what was wrong.  It was easier to give in. When I did give in on those nights when he didn’t get what he wanted, it was always depraved.  It was always humiliating. It was always something I didn’t want to do and I didn’t get the luxury of cocktails beforehand.

When he harped and harped about wanting to do things like go to the adult book store and sit in a dark room while strangers watched us and pornographic movies flickering in the background, I balked but did it.  Why? I don’t know anymore, except that he made the rest of my life more miserable until I gave in.

Constantly saying things like, “I just want to enjoy myself before I die. I only want you baby.  I just want to have fun.  Why don’t you want to make me happy?”

I had to be drunk, really, really drunk and he didn’t care that I needed altered consciousness to satisfy his needs. He only cared that I did what he wanted.  I remember going to a massage parlor and his telling the woman who barely understood English that he wanted to watch while she massaged me.  She knew I was uncomfortable and reticent.  She tried to make me calm but he kept pulling out money and pushing her to touch me everywhere until she did it.  He had her sit in the corner while he crawled on top of me and consummated my disgrace. I was ashamed because I gave in when I didn’t want to. I was ashamed because I could feel her discomfort too. I was ashamed because I felt soiled.

I would tell him afterwards that I didn’t want to do this or that again and he would just dream up something else. We went to swingers clubs where I would get so completely shit faced that I barely remembered half of what went on.  Letting strangers touch me, having strangers watch us have sex.  Having him make me be with other women so that he could jack off in the corner, it was all too sordid and it made me sick if I stayed sober.

The thing was that once it was over no matter what he’d made me do, he treated me like a queen for a while after that.  I still apparently cared that he cared. He was Prince Charming for those couple of weeks afterwards.  I couldn’t see the master manipulator. I couldn’t see I was being trained like a goddamned puppy.  It just never occurred to me. He couched everything in the “I’ve never done so and so, I want to do it before I die, Don’t you love me” so often that it made me think that we’d eventually do everything he wanted to do and he’d stop pestering me constantly to do more. 

He never stopped.